Neurotica Vocalist Recalls The Down/Adema "Brawl"
By
Sefany Jones,
Contributing Editor
Wednesday, September 4, 2002 @ 3:54 PM
| Neurotica Vocalist Kelly Shaef
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Well, this may be old news by now, but nonetheless if you want an “insiders” scoop on the whole St. Louis Ozzfest backstage debacle, Neurotica vocalist Kelly Shaefer posted the following in his online diary regarding the Down/Adema “brawl”:
Headed over for some slammin’ catering today -- we had some prime rib, and chicken really good shit, had dinner with Moke (Otep) and some of the guys from Pulse Ultra, along with many crew folks!! Bus call is about 1:00 a.m tonight, so we have some time to kick it around the show. Ill Nino was having a big ass BBQ over at their bus and we were all just hanging and getting shitty!
About 11:30 the guitarist from Adema and the singer Marky Chavez rolled over on a golf cart, about a bottle of Crown Royal in the wind -- I did not see them get onto Down's bus, but apparently they had a problem while on the Down bus -- soon the guitar player from Adema was exiting with a bloody mouth and he threw a glass bottle across the parking lot. We were all watching, wondering what had happened -- I mean everyone was drinking heavily today cause we had a day off tomorrow, even Joe the drummer from "Switched" was wrestling around with one of the t-shirt guys from Down, and it got a little heated and punches were thrown -- it was a wild night.
All of the sudden, all the guys in Adema came racing across the parking lot looking for who punched their boy in the mouth, they looked pissed and frankly, I thought it was quite "ballsy" of them to come over and challenge the guys in Down -- the guys in Down are a large group of guys with a lot of friends out here on the tour… Some shit talk was exchanged and Marky was yelling for the guitar player from Down to come off the bus. By now everyone from all of the bands were gathered around like some shit was gonna go down, I was not sure what was gonna happen. Pepper came off the bus and he and Marky walked to the side of the bus to discuss some shit, then Phil Anselmo came off. Now for Phil to come off the bus at this point was serious!!! I thought for sure it was gonna be an ugly scene, I kind of hoped that the head of security, "Big Val," would come and sort of settle it down before people got ****ed up.
At one point, we were all standing around our bus right by the fight scene, and Marky saw our guitar player Shawn smiling… the reason he was smiling was cause he was... well on the "ride of his life" so to speak, and this was all sort of comical to him -- sort of like as Shawn says, "HUMAN T.V." -- so Marky yells at him "WHAT THE **** ARE YOU SMILING AT!!” Shawn kept on smiling and Kelso and Migwell promptly told him that we are having an entirely different conversation, bro!!! He apologized and basically said he was pissed about his guitar player getting punched in the face, and I can respect that they had his back, and he said he was sorry, I could tell he was just a bit hammered, no harm done.
Soon Val did show up and I guess it was all worked out, I think it was just to much alcohol, and the fact that Dave Williams has passed has maybe caused a bit more drinking than normal, but at the end of the day it all worked out without anyone getting to ****ed up. It was an interesting scene to say the least. I remember Otep saying, "It’s about time this tour saw some carnage, it’s getting a bit tame out here!” Hahaha, she rocks man, I have a lot of respect for her talent and her character -- she is a rock star!!! Oh yeah earlier today, some guy tried to snatch the Neurotica poster out of the hand of this girl and hit her in the ass with it and he got it away from her, our drummer Jason was there and he said to the guy, “**** OFF!” The guy took a swing and Jason ducked it, the guy hauled ass, it turns out he is like the king carnie around here, and many have had a problem with him, so he was shown the ****ing door quickly -- it was just that kind of day, I guess, but we had a lot of fun, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out, hopefully they will bury the hatchet. See you tomorrow in Kansas -- should be fun!!!!!! (After leaving that night from St. Louis, I realized we did have a show the next day, we were playing the mainstage so there was no concern on my part for getting up early cause we will be playing at 5:00 p.m. on the mainstage.)
OK!!! we awake in Kansas on the mainstage side of the venue which means we get to shower in the dressing rooms which is nice and we get to hit catering right next to the bus, but there is so much more activity on the 2nd stage side of the venue. It was a really hot day out from the get go, we figured it would be no prob cause we were on a covered stage, but this venue was not covered at all, it was cool as hell, but not covered, so we went over and had a shower and checked out the stage, realized that we were gonna be baking right in the sun on stage, we had to do a shit load of walking around just to get to the showers and to the bus etc., so by the time we walked around the venue a million times getting ready, we were beat down from the sun, we went over to the Jager booth at around 2-ish, signed a bunch of posters, met a bunch of people and told them to get over to the main stage by 4:20 -- ironically that's the time we go on today -- HOW PERFECT RIGHT???
As we walked to the stage Marky from Adema came running off his bus and yelled, “KELLY, KELLY!” We were on our way to play and that was the last person I expected to be calling out my name, he came over was really apologetic about his behavior last night, he seemed really sincere, we told him that no one was laughing at him, Shawn was just smiling from... well his voyage that he was on... so we chatted for a minute, he felt bad about it all, and we just told him no worries, man, no worries, we are not violent people unless we have to be – it’s much cooler to be able have friends instead of enemies. A SIDE NOTE TO LAST NIGHT’S FIGHT IS THAT THE GUYS FROM ADEMA AND THE GUYS FROM DOWN WERE ALL EATING TOGETHER AT CATERING TODAY, IT WAS PRETTY INTERESTING!! I wondered how it would all work out, and I was happy to see that they had worked out all of the shit that happened last night.
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